Category: geeky and tech

Mad talent. *cough*
I’m getting into the swing of class again. I’m also already getting into new coding territory, so clearly I’ll be learning a lot. The coding teacher is great and really wants to add as much content as he can. Which is great. I’ve already handed in some assignments with more next week. School is just going to become busier and busier.
The silly melonhead above is from a Photoshop selection exercise. It may look silly, but it was actually an excellent lesson on selection tool use. Finally being formally taught some Photoshop is awesome.The reality of my surroundings
The small lab where I’ll be spending most of the next several months. I was late for a class and some keener new student took the seat I’ve sat in all year. Sigh. So… I’ve moved to the back row. *shrug* Traffic on Thursday was ridiculous. It took me close to 2hr to get to class. Highway 27 was backed up for blocks. It seems like it had something to do with the 407 and the on-ramp being closed. What a nightmare drive that was. I’ve tried a bunch of routes and Langstaff coming home is good but getting there in the morning efficiently is proving to be impossible.

Wow. Ottawa got hammered with a tornado. It looks like a few streets got bombed. I read over 100k people are without power. Phew.

We had a nice hike in Mono Cliffs today. Bdot was suppose to go to the Spa with BBB, but Buck was having some GI issues and had to go to Emerge. He is okay but will require surgery.

Bard’s Tale IV came out last week. I kickstarted it ages ago. So far I’m enjoying it. It has some issues but the gameplay is fun.

J118. Where I’m ALL the time…Yes, I’ll get some better photos of the room and campus.

Well, my first week back to college is in the books. It was both interesting, inspiring and stressful. The stress was mainly dealing with the many unknowns. Parking, traffic, taking the bus, fellow students. teachers… etc… The parking and bus were fine. There is tons of space in “E” lot and the bus comes every 15m, dropping us off in front of the main building. That seems to work out fine. To clear my head at the end of the day I like to walk back. I’ve tried a few routes and walking along HWY 27 seems to be the most efficient route. My classmates (all WAY younger – of course) have been welcoming and intelligent. Where Sheridan was really WASPy, Humber is very multicultural. Curiously so… The Profs were all very good. I really like the coding prof and the design prof, wow, he was like an ADD kid on cocaine. I expect I’ll learn a lot from them – they all seem to have excellent experience in the field. So far it has been mainly recapping what I know, but being taught it formally, there are little pieces here and there that are new to me. I’m looking forward to the rest of the program.

Hutch!

Yesterday, we drove up to Barrie then my sister’s to watch their dog for the afternoon. We took advantage of the time to run some errands in Barrie and to get a Mountain bike ride in. We biked in a new area recommended by my BiL. It was just a few minutes from their home. We biked the “black” and “red” Hutchison-Brown trail. I found it quite challenging, it was very narrow, really rooty and it was easy to get unseated. Still, any ride is good exercise. My calf muscle is killing me today.

My new buddy!

Once back at my sister’s, we were mobbed by her three cats. The biggest beast seems starved for attention and followed me all over the house. Her dog is getting old and was pretty chilled out most of the afternoon.

I’m using my Gallium OS converted Chromebook for class notes. It is the lightest and has the best battery life. It is working out pretty good so far. I WISH IT HAD BACK LIGHTING! GRR.

In Ontario Politics, a judge shut down Ford idiot, revenge move to reduce Toronto councillors. He doubled down on his stupidity today and threatened to use the not-withstanding clause. Gawd, what a buffoon.

BRR. We turned the heat on for the first time today. (And yet by the weekend it is suppose to be 30C again. *eyeroll*)

Yes, that is bdot behind the um flamingo…
Saturday was a busy day that started off early. We drove up to the Collingwood area intending to look at some Stand-Up-Paddleboards at the Blu Wave end of season sale. Bdot is happy with her Catalina 11.4 but the opportunity to upgrade to a much newer model for (potentially) a few hundred bucks was quite appealing. We also grabbed a Catalina 12.6 iSUP for us to use. We liked the idea of its portability (we found later that it had metal loops right on the board so it was MUCH easier to transport/tie-down to the roof of a car inflated) and to have a second board so we could be on the water together. Unfortunately, there was only one new Catalina 11.4 for sale, and it was being loaded into a car by a very happy buyer as we pulled into Blu Wave’s lot. Ho-Hum. The iSUP was an easy sell but bdot was tempted by some of the other SUPs still remaining. We came VERY close to leaving with the Catalina 12.6… but after reflection, bdot REALLY wanted to find a 11.4 solution that worked. (Ha, but we still left with two SUPs anyway, as she bought one for a friend) Today she sold her Catalina 11.4. We are still debating about getting another board (she would like to get a newer 11.4) or just make do with one board. TBD…
We spent the rest of the day at Little River Beach Park. Most of the parks along 26 were expectedly rammed. We lucked into finding this cute little park with water access, a small beach, and washrooms! It was a great place to test out the new iSUP. I really enjoyed it. It handles soooo much nicer than the Apsley Rec board I tried earlier this Summer. The day was made perfect with Kawartha Dairy Ice Cream and Indian take out. Mmm.

Yesterday we trekked into the Sun’s burning heat to met my sister and BiL at IKEA. In the morning, before venturing out, we enjoyed a Mountain Bike ride in Palgrave. It was an oddly planned day. We saw them at IKEA for a few minutes then they were gone. *shrug* We found a few household organizational items. I scored two LED desk lights and an ottoman.

It turns out the OUYA was a huge disappointment. And while the hardware could (might?) still be useful, the little box is locked down to prevent easily installing a potential new, useful OS over it. I tried (Android) and tried (Linux) however…
The Debian (Linux) installed failed because the Tegra 3 Driver listed in the install doc (dpkg -i tegra30-r16_3-*_armhf.deb) could not be found. (Yes, got nearly to the end of the process then no final, most important driver to be found…) SIGH. The Android 5.0 install failed much earlier with a problem I’ve had many, many times before… with the USB/Android driver (android_winusb.inf) failing. It NEVER works. So it was a big run around for nothing. I was able to install zippo, nil, nothing useful on the OUYA. Sigh. I wasn’t expecting awesome, but connecting it to a TV via HDMI to play music or something would have been cool. I would be a nice, portable device… Maybe someone will figure out an easier way to install an OS in the future. I guess it goes back to the crawlspace.

This beauty was captured by my Mom at KK’s visitation. A small ray of light on that dark day…
Miss you buddy.

Oh. And I’m returning to full-time school tomorrow for the first time in a decade. Phew. Humber. Hmm….

Gratuitous cottage sunset photo
I guess I owe the blog an update! We are often away during weekends in the Summer, and this year is no exception. Two weekends ago we spent the weekend at my SiL’s cottage. It was oppressively hot, felt like upper 30s… So being near the water was wonderful. We were greeted by Black Sabbath blasting from an LP, I thought that was an exalted welcome. (We ended up listing to the whole album after we got settled…) Due to the extreme heat – most of the activities involved the boat or chilling by the lake. We enjoyed a lovely cruise navigated by Captain Liam one night, the (above) sunset was quite nice. The major outing was a boat trip to The Waubic. This included a voyage through Big Chute and its interesting lock.Like a massive boat rollercoaster
It was a stupidly hot day. Once we arrived at the Waubic we were told the heat had taken out a number of their appliances (including a beer fridge – RIP) – so they were having a horrible day trying to keep up with orders. Frankly, I’m surprised they stayed open. But the staff admirably trudged through, what I’m sure, was an awful day for them. It was NOT reflected in their attitude. Remarkably, they remained welcoming and relaxed. So – in spite of the ridiculously long way for our delicious food, we didn’t complain. The World Cup was on and Flying Monkey’s were on site – so there was plenty of distraction. I would return, I was impressed by the Waubic. I thought it was neat to boat to a restaurant too. Not too surprisingly, all the Sun took its toll on me. I was wiped out by the time we returned to the cottage. I spent most of the night in bed with a headache. Sigh.
While at the cottage, I talked SNES Classic with Bdot’s BiL. Apparently the system is very hackable, with low risk… I tried it when I got home and added tons of games to the system flawlessly. I was a little disappointed initially with the games but with the hack, and the ability to add vitually any SNES game, the system is a good buy.
The rest of the weekend was spent eating, reading, swimming and relaxing. Typical cottage weekend. It was a good time.Water, water everywhere
We have a lot of gardens on our property. Seven big garden beds. Keeping them (and the lawn) watered consistently is difficult and time-consuming. We have spent a good deal of money on landscaping, plants and the exterior of the property – so in a small way – we wanted to protect our investment. So we had a sprinkler system installed last week. To attempt to keep the cost down we helped with the prep and install. I moved tons of pea gravel and we both helped with the install. *eyeroll* It saved us a measly $200 bucks, which, IMHO, was waaaaaaaaaay less than the time and effort we put into it. Nevertheless, the plants and lawns are now on a schedule and we don’t have to worry about them when we are away throughout the hot Summer days.
The big news story over the past few weeks was the rescue of the Thai Boy’s Soccer team that was trapped in a cave for over a week. In a rare instance, the World seemed to pull together and join forces to mount the rescue. Divers and resources from all over the World were brought in to save the boys. Miraculously, ALL the boys and the coach got out alive. It was an incredible story of the power of unity. It is a shame it happens so rarely. Sadly a Thai Navy Seal died during the rescue.
The World Cup is down to three team for the Cup: France, England and Croatia. England and Croatia square off today. The games have been good with the exception off all the embarrassing theatrics by some of the players. Neymar acted like such a baby the internet memed him badly. I’m hoping for a England/France final.
We are camping at Bon Echo this weekend. Sadly we just found out there is a fire ban there, so that is disappointing.
I’m such a sucker for Linux Mint. We have a long on and off relationship. We are dating again. I’ve installed 19 on the laptop. So far it is solid. Which I say every time until it isn’t….
I got snipped yesterday. That was a very unpleasant experience.

Early last week we spent a few night’s at Anita’s cottage to celebrate Bill birthday (and to get together). Pete and his family were in attendance to enjoy in the merriment. And there was plenty of merriment. I have a new respect for Jagermeister after over indulging on the first night. The boys took the Red Racer Beer trip across Canada. The trip was really hit and miss. I thought Yukon’s beer had spoiled it was so bad. BC and Newfoundland were the best IMHO. We enjoyed much of the festivities on their amazing new deck. We ate and drank like Kings and Queens, it was a fun few days.

Our setup for 1116.

It has been a while since we last went camping. But we are now home after three nights at the Pinery just outside of lovely Grand Bend. It was a great park. We had a site in Burley (1116). The Pinery is a huge Provincial Park. You really get that sense when you drive down the many long one way roads between the different park sections. The park has plenty to offer for those who enjoy outdoor activities. During our stay, we hiked the Nippissing trail (the lookout wasn’t worth it at all, trees are overgrown all over the area so you can’t see anything and constantly dodging the hungry poison ivy gets tiresome really fast), by contrast the Riverside trail was a wider, accessible trail with charming boardwalks and vistas overlooking the lily pad infested Old Ausable Channel. So the hiking at the park we found to be hit and miss.

Bumpy but lovely road.

The biking, however, was excellent. Biking is by far the best way to get around the park. There are sections of road dedicated to biking in addition to the long in-park, forested Savannah trail and the long bike link to Grand Bend will give bikers plenty to do.

Sandy beach

The highlight was, however, Lake Huron and the beaches. Wow…just awesome. The water was cool, refreshing and clean, the beaches were a combination of rock and sand. We stayed mostly on the dog beaches (1 & 2) which were quite nice. Most people kept good control over their dogs.

Long shot of the beach

I’ve read about how great the sunsets are over Lake Huron but we got three duds. The last was a miserable, depressing grey nothingness. Hmmpt.
We had a few minor run-ins with nature. The most interesting was having to stop the car and let a massive family of wild turkeys pass by. The turkeys didn’t seem concerned about blocking traffic as they took their time meandering across the road. When we first arrived I heard a strange whistling I thought was a kid with a toy but it turned out to be a bird. I didn’t determine which bird it was, however.
We tried to have a fire each night. The first night ended up being a complete fire gong show. The wood for the park (at $7.50 a bag!) was wet and rotten… basically garbage. So that was frustrating. We got wood outside of the park the next day at Mellin’s and had much better results the next two nights.

Mmmm BBQ. *drool*

One thing we did that made a big difference was preparing all the food before camping. The Smokey Homer was amazing at heating up meals for quick eating. Foil package meals were fantastic!
Thanks to my Mom for watching our beasts. We enjoying having the freedom to explore the wonderful park. We expect to be back…we didn’t kayak or explore several other hiking trails.

The Schoolhouse

On the way home from the Pinery we stopped at Schoolhouse restaurant for breakfast. It was a decent meal, the service was friendly and unattentive. The restaurant has some curious old historical artefacts from when it was a school many moons ago.

Front Yard Reno. Before and After.
We decided to finish the landscaping in the front yard. The results, we think, are incredible and practical.

I have a massive repository of wallpapers in a google drive folder. I use it for all my device/computer backgrounds. For Windows, I use the great app, John’s background changer but for my Android phone there wasn’t an easy solution. Google drive doesn’t automatically sync to Android. Sigh. So the solution was two steps:
1) Use Foldersync lite to sync my google drive wallpaper folder to my phone then
2) Wallpaper Changer to randomly select the images off my phone.
It works well so far!

I’m a bit obsessed with scrobbling what I listen to last.fm. I find Spotify on my PS4 with PCM audio has the best sound available but had issues finding a way to scrobble from my PS4. I just came across a solution that seems to work: spotifyscrobbler. Enjoy!

Game of Thrones is back. Revenge of Arya.

We watched Deepwater Horizon last night. It was surprisingly well done. (Sorry, my bar for Mark Wahlberg films is typically VERY low…) But the film focused as much on characters and how the event evolved, as it did on drama and explosions… it created a very compelling thriller. It suggested corporate greed of BP and the heroic actions for some of the rig workers. The actual event is quite the story.

Rain? So what? Well… when it is non-stop for days… then it is far from so what. Across Ontario and Quebec, there has been serious flooding. It is so bad around Montreal that the army was called in. It is historic flooding in some areas. Fortunately, around the GTA (and North of it) the water drained off. The cottage we often go to in the Summer on Round Lake has flooding in the area. Ugh. Be safe people!

In spite of the dreadful forecast, we ventured up to the Sister in Law’s cottage for the weekend. Yes, it did rain for most of the weekend, but we still enjoyed being at the new and improved, comfy cottage. Bill was putting his Raspberry Pi‘s to work in two different projects. The first, and clearly most popular, was Retropie. This project converts your Pi into a retro gaming machine! Yes, you can play SNES, N64, Neo Geo, PS2 etc. etc. (the full list is here)… the nephews were gaming non-stop all weekend. Retro games sadly have short 20-30 second loops, so the music did get annoying after a few HOURS. I’ve tested it out and eventually got my PS4 controller to work (the XBox 360 controller – which I would prefer to use, I couldn’t get to function)… Sigh. Still playing with different games, ROMS and systems. I didn’t own any of the Nintendos – so it is pretty interesting to browse the catalogue. The second project used a Pi as a Squeezebox Server/Player… I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks promising. The project details for MAX2PLAY can be found here.
We did make one short trip to Coldwater. It is a cute little town. Of all the things I didn’t expect to see… Coldwater hosts an annual Steampunk festival that attracts thousands! Huh.
In the evening we watched one the Academy Award nominated films Hidden Figures. It was certainly an interesting story. My favourite line was “At NASA, we all pee the same colour.”
Enjoyed a Vicar’s Vice with Bill.

Vicar’s Vice. Mmm.

I’d certainly get it again.

Well, the story of the Robins has closed a few chapters today. There were three fledgelings, bdot found two this morning that didn’t make it. Today I saved one twice that had fallen in the crack along our siding door. It is going to be close to zero tonight… We did try to put the bird in a nest, but I’d be surprised if it survives the night. I observed the robins for a while today. They are pretty stupid, but dedicated birds.

What will tomorrow bring for you?Parenting.

UPDATE!
Not sure what happened to the bird… it was wandering off toward the ravine last we saw it. Didn’t see it or the parents today. Hmm.

Ha. Both game seven teams I was cheering for LOST. Sigh.

And I thought this was funny:

I felt really depressed today, so I ate a whole bunch of chocolate. It cheered me up quite a lot. Chocolate seems to be the answer.

Well the US v. Russia game couldn’t have been closer. It was tied 3-3 and tied after OT… it took 7 rounds of shooters for US to win. Incredible game.

The late game was Canada v. Sweden . Canada was actually the underdog against the powerful, undefeated Sweds. Canada started slow and let in some soft goals. Hart took over in net and Canada responded. The boys poured it on with consistent skating and attack. Even when up by two goals. (Did you watch Bylsma?) With an empty netter, Canada won 5-2. It creates a US v. Canada final tomorrow night! US won the first meeting. Go Canada!!

My S4 has been my incredible phone for many years… it still works pretty well but it is starting to show its age. Bdot eventually spoke to someone helpful at Rogers and was able to arrange for a update to a Samsung Galaxy S7. My first pick by a hair was the Google Pixel but since it is a so-called Premium phone it was an $200 but some ridiculous monthly fee. So forget about it. I’m excited to get the S7. I’ve already ordered my Otterbox for it. I can unequivocally say that the Ottobox case saved my S4 many, MANY times… it was an automatic add-on for my new phone.

I’ll update once I get the phone.

Update!

Samsung S7 beside S4

I got my S4 in December of 2013. So it worked well for about 3 years. (..and it still works… and I’m replacing the battery which – I assume – will fix the random, power related, spontaneous reboots… but we’ll see. I will still use it for notifications/clock/weather/info on my desk.) Still there were odd system issues with apps randomly closing. Frankly it is just interesting to upgrade. I found out the S7 will be getting the newest Android 7 too as well. So that is awesome. Comparing the two phones the first big change is the screen. Moving from the S4’s 1080 x 1920 441 ppi to the S7’s 1440 x 2560 pixels 576 ppi is pretty dramatic. Of course it also seems snappier with twice the RAM and a Octa-core, 2300 MHz, Exynos M1 and ARM Cortex-A53 , 64-bit chip for the S7 vs. the Quad-core, 1900 MHz, Krait 300. I’ll have to use it for a while before I can really gauge any performance. I’ve read about how great the camera is, we’ll see. I do like the double home tap to access the camera quickly and the auto focus is lightning fast. It really seems like a logical hardware progression. More, faster, better. I’ll report back after I play with it.

Bah. After an incredible tied game goes to OT… US scores one goal in the shootout to win the World Juniors. Canada had an OT PP and plenty of chances and didn’t capitalize. How disappointing. Shootouts suck. Still silver is better than 6th last year.

Lovely walk in Albion Hills
Ontario is really lovely this time of year. Walks are mandatory. We did the long Red Trail Loop. It is listed as 8.4km but we walked in to the trail so it was closer to 10.3km. It is certainly Albion Hills. I was pretty zonked after the walk but it was worth it. (Bdot’s phone said the elevation changes were the equivalent of over 60 floors!) The trees and leaves were still full of colour, there was a few minor vistas and numerous changes in scenery. We had a great fish dinner to reward ourselves from the long walk. Yes, I ate some salmon.

The new motherboard I bought four months ago (the ASRock H61M-DGS R2.0) died. It won’t POST and it’s stuck in a boot loop. Disappointing. I’ve never bought ASRock before so…I was apprehensive. Fortunately ASRock allowed me to return it or repair (RMA!). I’m not entirely sure what they will do, but I’d love to continue using my old i5 chip. It is a beast. I’ll update this once this is resolved.

Ugh. Walking Dead. Brutal. I think it has gone too far. Killing off two of my Favourite characters so savagely. The series is popular because of the characters killing them all leaves nothing. Meh.

Had a short visit today by KK and his kids. We watched TFC end the season with a win! They are finally getting their first home playoff game in franchise history. TFC! TFC! TFC!

Stained stairs
The stairs may not have turned out exactly like we wanted… But they they are protected.

The region got hit with a pretty decent snowfall. Of course the snow blower wouldn’t start…. so both of use are feeling the pain of multiple snow removals. Ugh. Looks nice outside though.

I mentioned before trying to get RemixOS working on my older PC. It was a gong show. A time sucking gong show. So they are at BETA now… which means it really should be getting close to a release but I still can’t get it to run. I’m pretty sure it is a video driver issue. I’ve tried about five different video cards (like I did for Alpha) and the OS boots, gets to the ” Android x86 line” then the dreaded black screen of fail. The install to Hard method got it this far… Meh.
What irritates me is they are targeting this OS for legacy computers but seems to fail on a ton of older video cards. “Old dog, new tricks. Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Remix OS for PC allows you to experience Remix OS on a vast array of existing Intel-based PCs already out in the world.” I also wonder if AMD is even supported? Oh well. I noticed that the Android-x86 Open Source Project has partnered with RemixOS (Jide Technology) so this is promising. I’ve had better luck with Android x86 distros than Remix. Wait and see I guess. Ho-hum.

Brilliant illustration of Bowie by http://helengreenillustration.com/
Ugh. Awoke to more sad news… the passing of music icon, legend, artistic genius David Bowie. I was not a huge Bowie fan. But I certainly respected him and his incredible longevity in the business. 🙁

I’ve been playing around with RemixOS. I’m very excited about the possibility of running Android on some of my older PCs. So far however, all the attempts to install, or even simply just booting the OS have failed. I’m hoping the official BETA release from Remix tomorrow is better. Wait and see I guess. Hugely disappointing so far… the installer the brutal.UPDATE 01
Well the official Alpha was release today by Jide. And it is garbage. I have two PCs and followed the instructions to the letter. (Really just burning an ISO… big deal) And neither system will boot the OS let alone INSTALL the OS. I was really excited to see Android on PC. They say it is intended for older PCs but clearly don’t support enough of the architecture to make it work. Both PCs are stuck in boot loops. I tried both USB and CD installs with both Guest and Resident installs. Absolutely nothing worked or even got to the loading screen. FFS….

Also trying to download PhoenixOS. But the download keeps timing out or erroring so… can’t even test that version. It is another Android variation.UPDATE 02
Finally downloaded this. LOlZZzzz. The ‘installer’ is in Chinese. I tried an existing USB installer. It of course didn’t work at all. Don’t waste your time with this.Clearly I’m not meant to play with Android on PC.

The actual android-x86 .ISO gets the farthest but still fails to install. This version at least as a detailed instruction page. It hangs at the android screen. I’ll stick with trying this version. If I get anywhere I’ll update this entry.
The 5.1 install is what I was initially trying. It was the build giving me all the problems. So… Now trying the 4.4 build and I’ve got it to the Android Loading screen. After a good 15 or so minutes loading Guest mode from DVD…. It seems to be working! Well sort of… I finally have a screen and mouse control, but that is about it. Oh wait…. more loading…. more of the OS is slowly emerging. This is unusable but at least I may finally get a look at the OS!
The real issue is the installer NEVER properly detects my hard drives. I’ve tried SATA and IDE… nothing seems to work. Hmmpt.

UPDATE 03Finally. IT’S ALIVE!
After hours of rebooting, reinstalling, refortmating, reburning and restarting… finally got a version of Android to boot. I’m now running Android x86’s 4.4.4 version of Android! Yes it come with google apps. Wifi works. Play store works – sort of – it is really slow and somewhat unresponsive. I’m not sure why. Going to reboot to ensure this isn’t running in memory.
I’m not really sure what I did differently? I reburned the 4.4.4 .ISO to my USB (the same USB that failed on the same computer before?!). The only difference was I added a small FAT32 partition (it’s about 16G) and I believe it used it to install… but now it is detecting all the drives. So… I’m not entirely sure why it is suddenly working but I’m going to play with it a bit and update again! Very cool. The display is really nice and full screen. My USB mouse/USB keyboard work fine. Yaye! UPDATE 04
Woo! It is an installed version of Android! Also my ethernet connection also suddenly started working so Google Play is now working as expected! Weeee! Android on my PC! Good-bye Windows!UPDATE 05
I know it says in a lot of places to install as FAT or FAT32… but I found that it does NOT use the whole partition space if you do. I had barely 560M of space. I reformatted with ext3 (linux) and now the internal storage uses the FULL partition of 16G! 😀UPDATE 06
Huh. Well… Remix released new versions of their OS. One is the legacy image the other the EFI image. Don’t bother with the torrents… both downloaded and were corrupt. However! I finally got a version of remix to boot! I’m now looking at remixOS for the first time. The legacy image/guest mode did boot. More on this later. It really looks like an OS created for a PC, not a OS that runs on a PC. More after I play with it for a bit. The UI is certainly sharp looking.

Wow. Sabres won a game. Reinhart with a hat trick! Have to mention Kane passing to Reinhart for the goal that gave him his hat trick. You know Kane wanted to score and shut up the ‘Peg fans but he unselfishly passed to Sam. Kane scored more points with his team than can be imagined I’m sure.